China-developed cyber mimic defense withstands 500,000 attacks

A cyberspace security system based on the China-proposed mimic defense theory has withstood over 500,000 hacker attacks in an international challenge, held in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province.

In the first "Qiangwang" (cyberspace power) International Elite Challenge on Cyber Mimic Defense, which concluded Saturday, the system detected and blocked all attacks from 22 teams of Chinese and foreign "white hat hackers" -- computer specialists who use hacker techniques to test computer and cybersecurity, according to the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), co-sponsor of the event.

The mimic defense system features an ever-changing software environment, which makes conventional hacker attacks difficult to locate a target.

The system is expected to change the current "ex post facto defense" pattern in cybersecurity, according to Wu Jiangxing, CAE academician who first proposed the theory.

During the challenge, which concluded Saturday, bouts of attacks from several teams were frustrated even after they were given access to install backdoors to the system, the CAE said.

"The result has proved the effectiveness of the system and is expected to promote cyberspace security," Wu said.

Inspired by Mimic Octopus, the master of disguise in nature which can change appearance to adapt to the environment, Chinese scientists proposed the idea of mimic computing in 2007 and produced the world's first mimic computer prototype in 2013.